Author(s)

N. I. Mohareb, A. G. ElAdawi & H. M. Ayad

Abstract

Historical sites represent a valuable cultural memory and a testimony of passage of time in Arab-Islamic cities. They represent one of the tourist attraction points to navigate through time and culture within a number of significant morphological sites. Consequently, most governmental agencies carry out plans for upgrading and conservation of those sites, in order to maximize the economic and cultural benefits from the tourist interests as well as to maintain and improve the local morphological characters and the traditional user’s activities. This research highlights a major problem that has to be taken into account when setting those plans, which is the location of the start/end dropping point for tourist tours. These points usually affect the tourist’s ability to grasp most of the historical site in an adequate time and with less effort. In addition, they will affect the economic and socio-cultural activities which the government seeks to upgrade and benefit from, through deciding what, where, and how the tourist will grasp the historical site. The research will explore a number of methods on how to locate and arrange the dropping points for tourists from the spatial configuration point of view, taking into account the other users activities and interests. The research will depend on ‘space syntax’ as a base investigation quantitative method, in addition to other qualitative methods to verify the outcomes. Historical Cairo is selected to be the case study to analyze and test these methods. Keywords: tourist navigation system, space syntax, tourist’s dropping points. 1 Tourist navigation system This research’s main concern is how to manage and design a tourist tour in a historical site, with a special emphasis on identifying the main start/end points of

Keywords

tourist navigation system, space syntax, tourist’s dropping points.